RETRIEVE: REmembering Tool for Reusing the Ideas Evolved in Value Engineering

Value Engineering (VE) studies on a number of facilities have been carried out for half a century now since the initial application of VE to the construction field. As a result, many VE proposals (VEPs) have been produced and applied. “VEPs” refer to groups of creative and innovative ideas produced by experts in various fields based on their experiences, knowledge, and situation analyses. The construction industry, however, has not exerted enough effort to systemically accumulate and use such knowledge. Thus, there is a need to increase the productivity of VE study under the present circumstances.In this study, RETRIEVE (REmembering Tool for Reusing the Ideas Evolved in Value Engineering), a system designed to (i) capture ideas from the past VE study cases for use in solving the current problems and improving the current situations; and to (ii) support the development of a VEP, was developed. To develop RETRIEVE, the information and knowledge that had been included in VEPs were classified, and a case library was constructed based on the establishment of their expression types. In addition, a matching algorithm and a ranking algorithm for retrieving past VEP cases, which are helpful in addressing the current problems, were developed. Case studies were carried out to validate the usability of the system, and the adequacy of the method for weight assignment was verified.